Fighting The Power

Harrison took a supervisory job in the county's central office in
1985. A vocational education teacher with an advanced degree and
administrative certification, she couldn't help noticing that most of
the male administrators actually did have coaching backgrounds. She
also observed that, although there were female supervisors and
coordinators, few women had made it into high-profile roles such as
principals and assistant superintendents, where they could be visible
role models for students.

For Harrison, that dawning awareness of inequity--the appearance of
discrimination, if not the fact--rapidly evolved into a crusade. And
although she wasn't always popular, Harrison persisted. In the end, she
lost a major battle--a federal investigation found no gender-based job
discrimination in Cabell County--but for the many women who follow in
her footsteps she may have won the war.

Says Harrison with her Appalachian drawl: "I have become not only
notorious but sort of a celebrity. People I don't know have thanked me.
So I know it was all worth it.''

Even among those who agreed with Harrison's single-minded quest for
equality--and particularly those who found themselves on the receiving
end of Harrison's pointed barbs-- few would quibble with her own claim
to notoriety (See page XX). Harrison's closest collaborators admit
that, at times, her intensity was a bit hard to take, even for them.
But many concede that were it not for Linda Harrison, the reforms
eventually instituted by the Cabell County schools might never have
materialized.

In September 1986, Harrison found a sympathetic partner in colleague
Dorothy Scott. Over a period of years, both had reached for brass-ring
promotions only to come out empty-handed. Scott, who was qualified and
experienced as a school principal, was working on a number of
curriculum-related projects, hoping to get back into a principalship.
"You didn't think much about it until you started looking back to see
who had filled those positions,'' Scott says.

The two women pulled out the system directory and started counting.
Recalls Harrison: "We noticed that we didn't have many females, black
or white, above the level of supervisor.'' There were no females
superintendents or assistant superintendents. Three of the 20 assistant
principals were female. And of the 43 principals, only eight were
women, all relegated to elementary schools, where, Harrison alleges,
administrators were paid less and perceived as having a more nurturing,
"female'' image.

Whether by accident or design, men appeared to have an edge.
Harrison, for one, has long suspected, but been unable to prove, that
coaching experience provided an express route to the central office.
She explains: "Our philosophy in this county has been 'muscle 'em.' The
coaching style was believed to be the only management or administrative
style that would succeed.'' In a 1987 Cabell County newspaper article,
the local school superintendent was reported to have admitted that it
was expected and accepted for coaches to move into administration. But,
he was quoted as saying, "I know we're beginning to look beyond the
coach. I can't emphasize enough--I think those days are behind
us.''

Harrison's own experience tended to support her view that only those
applicants who had been tested on the field of athletic competition
were deemed worthy of promotion. In 1972, long before concerns about
equity entered her mind, she had applied for an assistant principalship
at a Cabell County high school. "I was told by two administrators that
it was a man's job, that it took a lot of muscle, and that there were
easier ways to get into administration. At that point in my career, I
wasn't sophisticated enough to know that I was being discriminated
against. These guys were super nice fellows--personally and
professionally. I took them at their word and said, 'Okay guys,
thanks.'''

Fourteen years later, Harrison was less charitable. She and Scott
decided to take action. The quiet, even-tempered Scott began doing
research into federal employment regulations. Harrison's approach was
more direct. She made an appointment to talk about the issue with the
superintendent of schools. "I was so naive,'' Harrison recalls. "I
figured that no one had ever realized that there was this problem. I
actually thought he would say, 'My God, I'm so glad you came to me.
You're absolutely right. We're going to change this.'''

But at that meeting, Harrison alleges that then superintendent
Robert Frum leaned back in his chair, laughed, and said that the only
way women were going to move into administration in Cabell County was
when men retired, resigned, or died.

(Frum, contacted by telephone, said that federal investigators had
found no discrimination and that those findings "spoke for
themselves.'')

But Harrison wasn't willing to wait that long.

She and Scott put their observations and research findings into a
68-page report that pointed out the specific areas where there was a
gender imbalance and explained the federal laws that are supposed to
protect employees from discrimination.

On January 15, 1987, after a meeting of administrators, Harrison
handed the report to the superintendent. Copies of the document were
also delivered to members of the school board. And then she waited for
a response, feeling more than a little trepidation.

To her surprise, a few board members applauded Harrison for bringing
the information to light. And even among those who didn't offer praise,
no one could dispute that there were more male than female
administrators. Julia Hagan, a board member who has since become
president, and Jerry Brewster, who was assistant superintendent at the
time, both agreed that men had been promoted more frequently than women
but said that the disparity was not intentional.

Today, Hagan points to her own rise in power as proof that the
system is not discriminatory. "I don't feel that there has been an
effort to hold anybody back,'' she says. "Conversely, I don't think
there has been a great effort in this county school system to mentor,
assist, or help any particular minority.''

Some of the women who worked in the Cabell County schools had
another opinion. That same evening, about 25 of them were invited by
Scott to a local restaurant to talk about the study. As it turned out,
most of the women had stories of their own to tell. Many were teachers
with administrative degrees who had applied for administrative
positions and been denied.

Some women complained that, although they had applied for such
positions, they had never been asked to interview. Others who were
interviewed said they were asked inappropriate questions that reflected
the male-only bias: How would you discipline an angry adolescent boy?
What do you know about lining a football field? How would your husband
feel if you had to chaperone dances and games?

Brewster, who had been a part of screening committees for seven
years, admits that some of the interviewers in the past were not
properly trained. "They may have asked questions that were
inappropriate,'' he says. "But I never heard one that I thought was
blatantly discriminatory.''

For more than a week, the district did nothing. Then, in late
January, Frum reorganized his administrative staff, appointing several
women. And in early February, he established a special task force to
examine the issue. He did all this, in spite of the administration's
public stance that no discrimination was occurring.

Harrison was asked to serve on the task force, as was Nathaniel
Ruffin, vice president of the local chapter of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People and a Cabell County resident.
Earlier that year, Ruffin had written an official complaint to the
board charging that its hiring practices were racially discriminatory.
Both Harrison and Ruffin agreed to serve on the panel, but they
threatened to file charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission if the district administration did not expeditiously adopt
an affirmative action plan.

Both Harrison and Ruffin thought the creation of the task force was
a delaying tactic. "The task force had one of those time-consuming
missions,'' says Ruffin. "We were supposed to find out if there was a
problem. But they could tell by looking at their own personnel data
that there was a problem.''

After several weeks, it seemed clear to Harrison and Ruffin that the
board was not serious about taking action. Recalls Harrison: "We had
given the board a certain amount of time. When they refused to
recognize the situation, we contacted the EEOC in the Pittsburgh
region. We sent them a position paper, and they said that we had
grounds to file a charge.''

Harrison says she was advised by the EEOC that three or more women
should file a charge on behalf of "all similarly situated females.''
Harrison, Scott, and Mary Campbell, a teacher who had tried for years
to get a principalship, signed the charge. Scott and another black
educator, William Smith, signed a separate complaint, charging the
county with racial discrimination.

Some residents cheered openly. Letters of support appeared in the
Cabell County Herald-Dispatch. The newspaper also published at least
two editorials calling for the school board to implement an affirmative
action program and put an end to sex discrimination. "The time has long
since come to reject the 'good ol' boy' philosophy which for decades
has been at the heart of personnel decisions in the system,'' one of
the editorials stated.

Many others wrote and telephoned Harrison and Scott--sometimes
anonymously--to express their support. An 82-year-old retired teacher
wrote to say that she had been aware of the problem all her life but
didn't have the courage to do anything about it. Ruffin also received
encouraging calls. "I had lots of calls from black and white women
saying, 'I'm glad to see that somebody has gotten on the
administration's case,''' Ruffin recalls. "And, board members would
call and tell me, off the record, that they knew it was a 'good old
boy'' system but that no one would admit it.''

But not everyone in Cabell County was cheering. Sue Bowen and Mary
Curnutte, who had received administrative jobs when Frum reorganized
his staff, praised the administration in an article than ran in the
Herald Dispatch. "It just never seemed I ran into anyone to whom it
made any difference whether I was a man or a woman,'' Curnette was
quoted as saying. "It always seemed to me that ability to do the job,
your initiative, and the old Christian ethic of hard work paid
off.''

Harrison had naively and blithely assumed that the facts of the case
would be indisputable. But circumstantial evidence, she soon
discovered, is not necessarily proof of discrimination. When the EEOC
finally got around to investigating the case in 1988, all of her hopes
were dashed in an instant. The EEOC found no evidence of discrimination
and dismissed the complaint. Harrison, Scott, and Ruffin simply could
not accept the federal findings. They questioned the EEOC's
thoroughness. Investigators never visited Cabell County, and all
interviews were conducted by telephone. And Harrison never had an
opportunity to review school district documents submitted in
evidence.

Harrison also fears that the EEOC focused its investigation on the
specific cases of those who filed the charges instead of investigating
how the system treated women and minorities in general. She admits that
the individual cases were not strong. Harrison and Scott were, after
all, working in the central office. And, after the complaint was filed
but before the investigation began, Campbell and Smith were given
administrative positions. "There were women in Cabell County with
strong and recent cases who could have signed if we had known,''
Harrison says.

She believes that if investigators had looked beyond the individual
cases, they would have discovered a problem. Experience is a key
prerequisite for winning job promotions. But since few women had been
hired as principals, few had gained the seniority needed to win higher
level appointments. Says Harrison: "We couldn't move up the ladder
because we couldn't get to the first rung.''

And, she alleges, when men and women competed for the bottom-rung
positions, such as assistant principal slots, too often the job went to
the male because of coaching experience.

That practice may have happened years ago, says Jerry Brewster, but
things have changed. "There were many administrators who were former
coaches,'' the school board president says. "I don't know if that was
wrong. Many coaches did make good administrators.'' But, he adds, in
the seven years he has been with the system, he thinks the number has
dropped.

Harrison will never know how deeply the EEOC probed. To gain access
to most of the records in the EEOC case file, she would have had to go
to court. But starting--and paying for--a legal battle just didn't seem
practical, says Harrison. Although frustrated with the unanswered
questions, Harrison says that she and the others were able to let go,
mainly because they had already achieved their objective of making the
district and the public aware of the problem.

All along, the school district claimed that its policy was to hire
the most qualified candidate as required by state law, which stipulates
that qualifications and evaluations be given first consideration. When
two equally qualified candidates apply, the candidates' seniority is
also taken into account.

Even if such policies wind up giving men an advantage, says Raj
Gupta, a senior legal advisor for the EEOC, that doesn't necessarily
mean they violate the law. Only if the EEOC finds that the policies
were adopted with the intent to discriminate would they be considered
in violation. Regardless of the intent, Harrison still believes that
women in the Cabell County schools were held back. And what's more, she
says, the administration knows it.

In the months since the EEOC absolved the district of guilt, the
school system has added both an affirmative action officer and an equal
employment opportunity officer to its staff. And the task force
unanimously approved a recommendation for an affirmative action
advisory board. Although the positions are only part- time and the
advisory board has yet to meet, Ruffin says it's an excellent
start.

But there is more. When a batch of administrative jobs opened up
recently, women and blacks received promotions. Says Scott: "You know,
when you see six or seven women hired in the course of a year, you can
step back and say, 'I was a part of that.' Maybe those women will never
know it, or maybe they'll never understand it, but I know it.''

Some locals, however, do not give credit to Harrison and her
colleagues for even the smallest of gains. Hagan, for one, believes
that the county was heading in the right direction anyway. As she puts
it, "the cream has risen to the top in spite of, not because of,
Linda's actions.''

Although the number of women and minorities in administrative
positions--35, according to Brewster--still doesn't satisfy Harrison,
she is pleased that the number of grievances filed by employees has
risen since she began her fight. It is important, she says, for women
to be activists as well as teachers. "As a group, we teachers have
given away our power too easily.''

Both Harrison and Scott have been recognized for their efforts. In
the past couple of years, they have each received a leadership award
from the West Virginia Education Association and the National
Organization of Women's Susan B. Anthony Award.

But the best reward they've received is not one they can hang on
their wall.

This year, in the busy hallway of Miller Elementary School, a 2nd
grade girl asked Scott a seemingly logical question: "Mrs. Scott, what
grade do you teach?'' When the tall, elegant woman explained that she
was the school's principal, the little girl laughed with surprise. "I
never saw a lady principal before!'' she exclaimed.

"You see, Dorothy is a role model for that little girl,'' Harrison
says with a nod and a smile tinged with pride. "That's what it's all
about.''

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